Links - 5th November 2024 (1 - Migrants)

Dr. Maalouf ‏ on X - "Muslim men in Germany: "When Muslims become the majority, we will take over Germany by force. German laws will be replaced by Sharia law. If the Germans stand against us, we will attack them. Christians and Jews will have to convert or leave.” They mean every word they say!"

Meme - "Immigrant crime in Finland became a topic of public debate in the 1990s-early 21st century period with the arrivals of Somalis in Finland.
Sexual offences per nationality in 2017
Afghanistan 138.12 per 10,000
Iraq 133.86 per 10,000
Syria 41.59 per 10,000
Turkey 40.78 per 10,000
Sweden 28.69 per 10,000
Somalia 28.46 per 10,000"

iamyesyouareno on X - "The Viking begins to hate. "My son has been robbed 3 times. Twice by Somalis, once by Arabs. He's marked for life." "If I had a daughter I would follow her with a loaded shotgun." “I can’t find words to express my disgust with this government, they’ve betrayed our country.”"

Geiger Capital on X - "Bernie Sanders on illegal immigration: (2015) "Open borders? No. That's a Koch brothers proposal... which says, essentially, there is no United States. They would love to bring in people from all over the world to work for $2/hour. It would make everyone in America poorer.""

Skilled, educated and washing dishes: how Italy squanders migrant talent - "Marilyn Nabor, an experienced high school mathematics teacher in the Philippines, moved to Italy 14 years ago with high hopes of honing her craft in the country of Galileo and Fibonacci. Now aged 49, she works as a housekeeper in Rome, counting cobwebs and crockery, and has abandoned hope of returning to her former calling. "This country does not recognise our diploma or curriculum from the Philippines," she said. "I cannot get professional work." Even gaining qualifications in Italy didn't help Abhishek, a 26-year-old migrant from India who got a master's degree in mechanical engineering at Turin's Polytechnic University last year. Abhishek, who declined to give his surname, said he was rejected for a string of jobs because his rudimentary Italian was deemed inadequate. He has now found work as an engineer in the Netherlands, where he can get by with English. Such stories bring home an uncomfortable truth: there are scant prospects in Italy for foreign-born workers, however qualified they are, due to a combination of factors including a strict cap on work permits and a high citizenship bar. In contrast to much of the West, it's rare to see migrants working as doctors, engineers, teachers or in any other skilled professions - raising red flags for a country with a chronically stagnant economy and an aging and rapidly shrinking population. Last month the European Union's statistics agency Eurostat said just over 67% of non-EU workers in Italy are over-qualified, meaning that they are stuck in medium- or low-skilled jobs despite having university-level education. That compared with an EU average of about 40%. Only Greece did worse in the 27-member bloc, while France and Germany were between 30-35%. Italy, which is also contending with an exodus of skilled nationals to stronger economies, needs qualified immigrants to fill growing skilled labour shortages, many economists say. Unlike in much of northern Europe, English is not widely used in the workplace, despite being a global lingua franca... Italian gross domestic product has barely grown since the start of the century, after adjustment for inflation, and its labour productivity rose by just 0.4% per year between 1995 and 2021, less than a third of the EU average, Eurostat data shows... Most professional guilds are only open to Italian citizens, and have rigid requirements based on academic record, work experience or entrance exam...  "Italian bureaucracy is very complex and difficult to interpret."... For non-EU migrants committed to forging a life in Italy, the road to citizenship is longer and tougher than most Western European nations, requiring them to be at least 18 and a legal resident in the country for 10 years before they can apply.

Danish PM Says Migration Is Europe's Top Issue After Ukraine : r/europe - "in 2020, Germany got 1.19m people, 643.000 of them were non EU, among them 122k were Asylum seeker and 30.000 Skilled worker. I dont have data on amount of refugees. EU is open is refugees and asylum seekers but extremely strict with skilled workers. Whenever Politicians talks about stricker immigration policies only thing they do making harder to move legally, raising requirements to be skilled worker."
"Yes 100%. There are so many highly skilled workers that would kill to live and work in Germany/ Europe. The process is grueling and almost impossible. By these numbers above alone you are bringing in more dependents taking from the system (4x more to be exact) than people contributing to the system.  It would be good to see net flows but it’s obvious politicians have failed the average European.  Btw- I say this as a highly skilled immigrant in the EU"

Meme - Jack @unfelled_: "American liberalism in its current form is a death cult. Its most ardent belligerents are dysgenics, gays, minorities, and spinsters. This coalition offers no aspiration for the future. No organic growth. The only way the cult grows is to flood America with the 3rd world." Ulysses the Revengeft: "What an evil mentality. Also, unironically "what do you notice?""
elizabeth handgun @On...: "what exactly is bad about falling birth rates"
Cathy Reisenwitz: "There's nothing infants can do for the US that immigrants can't do better and more quickly"

Meme - Jonatan Pallesen @jonatanpallesen: "Amusing title from the Economist, "It's complicated", for a graph that clearly, unambiguously shows that non-Western immigrants to Denmark are fiscally net negative.  Immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa are even fiscally negative in prime working age!
The main reason for the negative economic impact of the Middle Eastern immigrants is that a large proportion of them do not work (more than half!), and instead collect social welfare.  Higher expenses to deal with the higher crime rates is another reason."

Thread by @AndrewHammel1 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - ""90% of young doctors are foreigners, and 75% of them don't speak adequate German". A German doctor pseuodnym "Bernd Ahrens" gives a frank, anonymous interview. Like so many other German institutions, the health-care system here is quietly collapsing.  There aren't enough places in German medical schools, and the best students often leave Germany because conditions here are dire -- earning potential is low, funding is scarce, and the bureaucracy is stifling. So Germany is dependent on foreign doctors. But of course the most talented foreign doctors are not going to Germany. So Germany imports anyone from countries like Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Bulgaria, and Romania. Technically they're supposed to speak German at at least C1 and they're supposed to prove their foreign credential is equivalent to a German medical degree, but hospitals desperately need warm bodies so these standards are fudged. As a result, the senior doctor says, 90% of new hires are foreign, and 75% don't speak sufficient German to do their jobs properly.
Ahrens notes one case in which a cancer survivor complained of lower back pain -- a clear sigh of metastases -- but the foreign doctor never grasped that the patient was telling him that he had previously had cancer surgery. The doctor sent him home, the problem got worse, and the patient was nearly paralyzed by a tumor. Mistakes and misunderstandings like this are constant, and the supervising physicians who are German have to step in and fix mistakes and mediate conflicts.
This is a huge extra burden, so nobody wants the top jobs anymore; the Chief Medical Officer position at the Ahrens' hospital has been vacant for a year. Ahrens has been offered top spots at other German hospitals but has refused.  When he points to the problems caused by unqualified foreign doctors with poor German, he is often accused of being right wing or a xenophobe. Yet everyone who's been treated at a German hospital -- including me -- has encountered the problem first-hand.
The background problem, of course, is that Germany is becoming steadily poorer. You could attract more Germans and good foreigners to the profession with higher salaries, but there's simply not enough money, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Asked for comment, German politicians and licensing agencies dribble pablum about how all doctors must have "suitable qualifications" and that foreign doctors are "filling a crucial need". In other words, the sort of thing they say about all problems until something goes horribly wrong."

wanye on X - "One thing I think about with respect to mass immigration is how quickly norms can fall. Does literally anybody think the Japanese practice of leaving unlocked bicycles out overnight would survive a large increase in immigration to that country? I mean, really, does literally even one person honestly believe that? And if you're Japanese, how are you supposed to think about valuing that in comparison to the economic benefits of immigration? It's a serious question: what is that worth? I don't actually know how to put a number on it."

CoolBlue on X - "Campaign Biden in 2020: I promise to reverse all of trumps secure border policies.
President Biden 2021: I just reversed all of trumps secure border policies.
Campaign Biden 2024: Why won’t the Republican house help me secure the border.
The Democrat party is America last."

Antillekt on X - "As a teenager growing up in Sweden, I had to withhold my opinions on male immigrants from the Middle East or Africa because you weren’t supposed to judge entire groups because of ethnicity. And especially the female feminist type wouldn’t allow any sort of discrimination whatsoever (since they also do not understand violence or the rules of engagement whatsoever). The reality was that whenever I was perhaps out at night and got threatened by an ethnic Swedish guy, there was always some kind of negotiation wether or not we were going to fight. Like “wtf are you looking at” means “do you want to fight?”, and everybody knew that. It might’ve been unpleasant but I was always able to negotiate myself out of the fight so I never had to. You just apologized and showed some kind of friendly/submissive behavior and they didn’t hurt you. And had it been a fight, it would’ve been over once it was clear either one of us was defeated.   The only time I was in a really bad situation was when I got surrounded by Arabs, because they weren’t interested in negotiating with me, they just wanted to beat the shit out of me. I managed to get out because one of them knew me a little and could calm down his friends. My friend got his scull literally cracked by some immigrants, without provocation or warning, for no reason.   So yeah there’s so much nuance when it comes to violence, and especially in a multicultural space where you don’t know the rules of engagement, you just don’t know if you’re fighting for your life or just until the first drop of blood. Unfortunately people who have never experienced violence will never get this."
Hank on X - "It's easier to dehumanize those of other races, especially when you're angry. This is an accepted fact by progressives when discussing the worst stories of white male violence or police brutality and so on. But that fact seems to evaporate when discussing other groups."
Antillekt on X - "Unfortunately it seems like if you’re deemed as having less power than your opponent, you’re in the right no matter what. Morals doesn’t exist to progressives, only power. And they view whites as top predators so white violence is never okay since it’s coming “from above”."

Meme - "I'm the only English speaker at my new job.. in the uk.. struggling to understand co workers & being hit on
 I'm not exaggerating - no one speaks English. The guy who hired me must have been outsourced or something.  I really struggled to get through the work day, and was getting told off for not understanding them (although I'm not sure what they were saying, just that I had made a mistake due to their tone and physically moving things)  I have no issue learning their language to get along with them, but no one told me the entire team does not speak any English so I couldn't have prepared for this.  Also, one of the team members started hitting on me (via text, i suspect he used google translate as he was unable to speak to me during work). Unfortunately part of being a woman in the workplace and it is my 2nd week so I don't really know how I'd tell anyone considering..Well.. they don't speak English.  I should clarify - this is not as if I have applied for a food place that caters to specific nationalities or a job where another language would usually be spoken. I have worked here before and had no issues.  I really don't want to be rude or offensive and I am willing to put in an effort to try to learn their language and understand but..I'm really dumbfounded how I am the only person on shift who can speak English in the UK. Not even broken English. Straight up nothing. I suspect the guy who hit on me used Google translate because he couldn't talk to me during the shift.  I really don't want to come across as rude with this post. I've just never faced this issue before and have no idea how to approach it. If it had have just been the language barrier I could have worked around it, but considering I'm being hit on and can't really report it to anyone.. help!"

Meme - "Make it make sense!
Democrats
$5 billion tax-payer funded border wall *No*
$451 billion per year tax-payer funded housing & care of illegals *Yes*"

Meme - Gad Saad @GadSaad: "There are countless European cities that used to have very little crime including very few rapes and sexual assaults. But over the past two decades, many cities have seen an astounding exponential increase in criminality. Women throughout Europe feel unsafe. Does anyone know what happened? Is it due to climate change? MAGA extremists? White nationalists? Please explain using simple words so that I might follow."

i/o on X - "Lefty opposition to mass immigration wasn't uncommon decades ago. For example, some environmental groups used to publicly oppose it because they believed it would lead to overpopulation and overdevelopment, which would damage the environment and deplete natural resources."
Kamala Harris' father warned that immigration was bad for black workers - "Donald Harris, an emeritus professor at Stanford University, issued a warning against mass immigration of low-skilled workers in a 1988 treatise he co-authored titled “Black Economic Progress: An Agenda for the 1990s.”...   “Trends in international trade have moved against U.S. workers,” he wrote. “U.S. immigration laws have been modified in ways that increase the influx of low-skilled workers, who compete with native-born youths and low-skilled adult workers for low-skilled jobs. “This shift has been a particularly serious problem for blacks, who constitute a high proportion of the low-skilled adult workers,” according to the book.  Harris, a Marxist economist, lives just a two miles away from his daughter in Washington D.C., but the two rarely speak...   The book, published just two years after the 1986 immigrant amnesty law signed by then-President Ronald Reagan, is typical of far-left economic thinking on immigration.  Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was once a sharp critic of mass migration and blasted open borders as a “Koch brothers proposal.”  “It would make everybody in America poorer,” Sanders told lefty columnist Ezra Klein in 2015.   Vice President Harris has supported granting illegal aliens “pathways to citizenship” — and continues to make the idea a pillar of her 2024 presidential race.  The US Citizenship Act of 2021, which the Biden-Harris administration introduced on their first day in office, would have granted legal status to millions of illegal aliens currently living in the United States."

i/o on X - "91% of those convicted of rape in the Spanish region of Catalonia are not native-born Spaniards."
El 91 % % de los condenados en Cataluña por violaciones son extranjeros
Visegrád 24 on X - "BREAKING: 91.67% of the people imprisoned in the Spanish region of Catalonia for rape are foreign citizens despite only making up 17% of the region’s total population. The figure has been released by the Spanish Ministry of Justice 🇪🇸"
Clear proof of how biased the Spanish legal system is against refugees

Meme - "Map of Sex Tourism In Eastern Europe
Destination Countries for Sex Tourists: *Baltics, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia*
Source Countries for Sex Tourists: *UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, Finland, Germany, Austria, Italy*
Countries currently unaffected by East European Sex Tourism
Routes of Low Cost Airlines: *From Source to Destination countries*"

Meme - H. Pearl Davis @pearlythingz: "1. Get married
2. Have 2 children
3. Stop sleeping with the husband
4. Cheat on husband.
5. Claim “emotional abuse” and leak out of context calls, texts, and conversations.
6. Ruin the man’s reputation in the town, city, or online.
7. Play victim while filing for child support, alimony, and his assets.
8. Play the “poor single mother card”
9. Tell the kids how evil the father is and give him little custody.
10. Ruin his reputation in any way you can.
I've seen it too many times"

Jailed Iraqi goat herder is a parable of Britain’s broken asylum system - "With its gentle promenade looking out onto the glinting Irish Sea, Aberystwyth feels perhaps as far from northern Iraq as it is possible to get.  It was here that Hawre Ahmed found himself last year, having fled a life of poverty and violence in his home country.  A goat herder by trade and so illiterate that he had his name tattooed on his forearm, Ahmed suffered under the years of Isis occupation and his father had earlier been killed during the Iraq war.  The 35-year-old came to Britain, in the words of his barrister, “to seek a better life”.  Yet Ahmed’s tenure in Aberystwyth lasted all of five days after he was arrested for dealing Class A drugs – evidence, many have said, of Britain’s “broken” immigration system. Following a string of convictions in recent weeks, details have emerged of how the one-time shepherd formed part of a gang of organised criminals – many of whom had been granted asylum in the UK – who flooded the university town with nearly half a million pounds in narcotics as part of a “sophisticated” county lines-style operation run out of Birmingham and Swansea. Some smuggled themselves across Europe in lorries; others across the English Channel... Aberystwyth residents have told The Telegraph how the atmosphere on their quiet streets has changed in recent years, and how drug dealing has become “prolific” and “blatant”.  An employee of a sweet shop located close to one of the gang’s safe houses in the town centre spoke of intimidating encounters with people wandering in “off their face”, having taken drugs in plain sight on the street.  Others described suffering a “terrifying” burglary, likely motivated by drug addiction. Judge Geraint Walters, who sentenced the gang last month, said the trade was a “blight” on the seaside town.  “It’s definitely increasing,” said one of the couples who was burgled this week – and too intimidated to give their names.  It was heard in court how the gang set up multiple front businesses for their nefarious trade: barber shops, car washes and others.  They also took control of several properties in the town, including one on the principal shopping street and another nestled amid the bustling parade of pubs opposite the train station. Another flat was located behind student accommodation on the beach front.  When police raided, they found weapons such as knives and air guns among the piles of drugs and cash. They even found an axe hanging from a coat hook... On two consecutive days in June last year, police intercepted vehicles carrying drugs worth tens of thousands... the ease with which refugees – allowed into the UK on the basis of fleeing hardship or persecution – have been able to adopt this lucrative model has raised disturbing questions. In the words of Judge Walters as he sentenced 12 of the gang to prison in a single sitting, it was “particularly sad” that one of the ring leaders had been given leave to remain but had chosen to repay the UK with serious criminal conduct.  In particular, the stories of low-level criminals like Ahmed are a parable of how Britain’s saturated immigration system provides easy cannon fodder for sophisticated criminal bosses.  The Kurdish man was, the court heard, living in Newcastle before being pulled to West Wales to work as a street-level dealer.  Although not all of the details of Ahmed’s immigration journey are known, it was heard in court that he travelled to Iraq last year to get married and then was allowed to return to the UK... Fay Yoemans, 54, runs a cake boutique in the small Market Hall shopping arcade near to the town’s castle.   “It’s very blatant now,” she said. “You see people gathering, waiting, then someone comes up on a bike and after a few minutes they all disperse.”  “I’ve been in this shop for the last 10 years and in the last two or three it’s got a lot worse.”... nearly 400,000 legal migrants who have moved to the UK since 2021 have done so without a criminal records check... senior law enforcement officials have warned that the explosion in the number of barber shops is due in part to their use as front organisations by criminal gangs for the drugs trade and other forms of illegality.  Gangs of Kurdish origin, as well as Albanian, have been named as particularly associated with the use of barber shops as criminal fronts. There has been a 50 per cent rise in the number of barbershops in the UK since 2018.  The UK received merely 79,000 asylum applications in the 12 months to June 2023, a 19 per cent increase on the year before, according to government data.  The current number is higher than at the peak of the European migrant crisis in 2016.  The Conservatives’ Rwanda repatriation deal was one of the key planks of its policy to curb illegal entry into the UK, notably via small boats in the Channel. However Labour has scrapped the scheme and is poised to grant more than 60,000 people asylum in the next year."

Zarathustra on X - "Lee Kuan Yew emphasizes the point that whatever immigration success America had in previous centuries owed to the fact that it was highly intelligent, highly resourceful, hard-working, high-agency, culturally compatible frontiersmen, explorers, entrepreneurs, etc.  Warns that if we keep getting “immigration of the fruit-pickers, you may not get very far”"
The left keeps celebrating the immigration of the fruit-pickers, so good luck

DogeDesigner on X - "The media has launched new propaganda against Elon Musk. Their claims are false. Elon Musk was legally permitted to work in the United States. He held a J-1 visa, which later transitioned to an H-1B."
~~datahazard~~ on X - "Even if true, what's the argument? - "If you don't care about super genius legal immigrant's brief lapse in visa status, you must fly 1,000,000 random inadmissible Haitians into Ohio""

𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚎𝚜 on X - "If we only received thicc latinas and petite asian women immigrants, liberal white women would form SS units overnight"

Small midwestern town 'overwhelmed' by 3,000 African migrants living tax-free - "TikTok is partly to blame for the sudden deluge. Mauritanians are finding their way to the town via a route posted on the app which flows from the Northwest African nation to Turkey, before looping through South America to the US... A tiny Ohio town is wrangling with a sudden influx of African refugees whose arrival has almost doubled the population over the past year. Close to Cincinnati, Lockland was home to 3,500 people in 2023, but local officials say it has since taken in more than 3,000 legal Mauritanian asylum seekers... Mason said the Biden administration's lax border policies urgently need amending otherwise immigration will continue to spiral out of control. The majority of the asylum seekers are entering legally. 'With the federal government's open border policy, these immigration population outbursts have been left for small villages like Lockland to have to deal with,' he said. 'If they're going to have an open border policy they're going to need a policy to direct these immigrants to communities that can withstand that kind of population outburst. 1.2 square mile village — it's unsustainable.' Mason added that many of the 3,000 Mauritanian migrants are not able to work - so they don't pay taxes. 'We're looking at, right now, at probably close to a $200,000 shortfall in our earnings income tax revenue,' he said. Doug Wehmeyer, who is both Lockland Village administrator and fire chief, said the influx of people has also placed a strain on the emergency services. He said call outs to the fire service have increased by 12 percent this year, with almost all the extra calls being made to complexes where the Mauritanians are being housed. This is partly because the migrants are being crammed into upwards of a dozen people inside around 200 units and cooking fires are frequent... It came without a triggering event — such as a natural disaster, coup or sudden economic collapse — suggesting the growing power of social media to reshape migration patterns... Many arrived in the 1990s as refugees after the Arab-led military government began expelling black citizens. Some who left say they're again fleeing state violence directed against black Mauritanians."
What did the people of Lockland expect? They should not have voted to invade Mauritania. Now all the poor black Mauritanians have landed in the most country in the world that murders blacks every day, and they will be subject to genocide

Lawsuit claims Chinese migrant 'exposed hundreds to rare TB strain' - "Louisiana is suing top American security officials after a Chinese migrant entered the state illegally and may have exposed hundreds to a deadly tuberculosis strain. The lawsuit specifically names Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and claims that 'through his official capacity' as security secretary he allegedly allowed the sick detainee to travel through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities."
When open borders are more important than keeping the country safe

Links - 4th November 2024 (3 - Housing in Canada)

Canadian Banks Financing Mass Immigration Lobby - "Canadian banks – Bank of Montreal, ScotiaBank and TD Bank – are funding the mass-immigration advocacy group Century Initiative, whose goal is to increase Canada’s population by 60 million people by 2100. Why would banks support this lobby group? Because the resulting housing inflation – home price increases – produces scores of billions of dollars annually in profit for them."
Who Funds the Century Initiative?

FIRST READING: Trudeau’s utterly daunting promise to immediately build an Alberta's worth of new homes - "what Ottawa has just pitched as a pre-budget bauble is one of the most mammoth promises ever issued by a Canadian federal government. In terms of cost, effort and raw logistics, building 3.9 million homes in just seven years would easily rank as one of the most awesome expenditures of national effort outside of the world wars. It is 552,857 new homes constructed every year for seven consecutive years, in a country that already struggles to build half that each year... The 552,857 figure is daunting even by the standards of the 1970s, when the federal government spurred a massive boom in homebuilding, a record that hasn’t been topped since. At the peak of that boom in 1974, Canada was able to roll out an all-time high of 257,243 new homes. Even if that figure could be scaled up in proportion to Canada’s current population size, it would still come out to just 411,000 new homes. And that was in an era where homebuilding was relatively easy; building codes were lighter, municipalities were more permissive and Canadian cities were surrounded by cheap farmland that could be easily converted into subdivisions... The figure of 3.9 million homes is not pulled out of thin air. It appears to be based on a 2023 estimate by the CMHC which found that Canada would need to build “about 3.5 million additional housing units by 2030 to restore affordability.” Affordability, in that case, is defined as restoring housing prices to what they were in 2004; effectively the last year when Canadian real estate prices were still a reflection of local incomes. But that would be 3.5 million “additional” housing units on top of Canada’s anticipated rate of new builds. So even if the new federal plan meets its target of 2 million “net new homes,” it’s still 1.5 million short of the CMHC estimate... or a plan pledging unprecedented rates of home-building in record time, it wasn’t hard for Moffatt to find areas where the feds had left money on the table. For instance, it had very little to address skyrocketing rates of fees and charges driving up development costs"

Concerns raised about proposed Newmarket 9-storey condo - "The building would be on a major road and transit corridor, help the town fulfil intensification policies and contain some units deemed affordable, said Rosemarie Humphries, president of Humphries Planning Group Inc., which represents Mosaik.  But others are worried.  Neighbours already had concerns when a six-storey, 147-unit condo building was approved for the site in 2021, resident James Wagstaff said in a letter to council.  Stressing he strongly opposes the now-larger proposal, Wagstaff said a nine-storey building “is completely out of character with the existing neighbourhood and would have a detrimental impact on the surrounding homes, particularly those on the north side of Penn Avenue. The towering structure would cast shadows, potentially diminishing the quality of life for residents, and affecting property values.”... Many are concerned that means vehicles leaving the condo building will create traffic headaches on surrounding residential streets, despite assurances from Humphries that a change to the signalization pattern at the traffic lights at Davis and Longford should help alleviate the problem.  The increased traffic on Penn would pose serious safety risks, especially for seniors in the area, Wagstaff said.  Howard Friedman, director of planning with HBR Planning Centre, the planning consultant for a numbered Ontario company that owns the land where Tim Hortons stands, said the restaurant is concerned about the effect on customers, particularly those using the drive-thru."
Of course, there were people who didn't understand the idea of a franchise, thinking that the Tim Hortons was owned by the main company

Canadians Fleeing Toronto & Vancouver Accelerated To A Record Pace: BMO

You can't all have your proverbial single family homes, and afford to live in one too. : r/canadahousing - "It genuinely boggles my mind how many users on this sub come on here to bitch about housing prices, only to turn around and also bitch about increased density in Canadian cities. The expectation of detached SFH for all this country seems to have is an outdated and to be frank, extemely harmful leftover from the postwar - mid 90s era of Canada.  We are currently living through some of the most rapid urbanization in human history. The fact is, worldwide, that most people want to live in cities. This goes for Canada too. 82% of Canadians now live in cities, as opposed to just over 50% in the 1940s. Immigrants to cities are not just coming from outside Canada, they are coming from inside Canada too.  This means people are densifiying. And housing needs to follow suit. This doesn't mean everyone has to live in a "shoebox in the sky" but it does mean enough of those people want to live in that style of housing that it warrants being built. You can see this pattern in so much of Europe and Asia, where cities both densifiy and grow outwards when possible, creating bustling city centres for those who want or need to live there, and large metro areas that gradually turn from ultra dense, to urban, to suburban, and finally rural communities as one gets father away from the city, all well connected with by both roads and transit.  The problem is Canada has decided to basically just build cities made up of extemely urban downtown's, surrounded by low density suburbs, and exclusively build out. This is simply not sustainable, eventually suburbs get too far from urban areas to be practical, not to mention how expensive suburbia is to maintain compared to higher density areas. Not to mention slow. We need to start densifiying our current low density and suburban neighborhoods, ALONGSIDE building new ones. This solves the distance issue too, as the new suburbs will still be near the now urbanized old ones."
"our building codes don’t allow us to build space efficient condos. Due to our fire codes we need to have 2 exit points in all buildings.  This severely restricts our ability to build anything but long dark corridors and units along that corridor with windows on one side. This type of layout makes it very difficult to build anything more than a 2bed2bath sub 1000sqft apartment. And 2bed 2bath is not family friendly.  Europe and Asia do not have these restrictions and their buildings have central stairway with units on all 4 corners make high density living much more livable with better unit configurations, more space and more light."
"Montreal also allows one of the exit points to be on the exterior of the building, allowing the same sort of development as in Europe or Asia."
"And this is the reason Montreal still has relatively affordable housing for a city of its size. Montreal also has a lot more missing middle housing."

Toronto’s housing crisis of 1922 was rooted in policies that still make homes unaffordable in 2022 - The Globe and Mail - "On May 14, 1912, motivated by moral concerns, the City of Toronto passed By-Law No. 6061, which meant no apartment buildings could be built on the majority of the city’s residential streets... Apartment-dwelling families were expected to have fewer children, and this was considered an unethical constraint on the natural order. Meanwhile, dwellings that offered in-house kitchen and cleaning services were seen as degrading the traditional role of a wife... by the end the century’s first decade, Dr. Dennis wrote in his landmark 1989 research paper, Toronto’s First Housing Boom, the city’s directory listed almost 50 such buildings creeping into single-family home neighbourhoods. This raised concerns about property values and privacy, as well as the loss of home ownership as a priority (apartments were typically rented).  City of Toronto Archives  Experts have often noted that the turning point was set in 1911 by physician Charles Hastings with the publication of his report exposing the unsanitary conditions of those living in the Ward, the inner-city slum located next to City Hall.  Fearing that Toronto might fall victim to the scourge of these “human packing cases,” so rife in New York, Dr. Dennis wrote, the report reinforced the belief that shared dwellings were immoral and not fit for Toronto.  “If Toronto becomes a city of closely-packed tenements,” one Globe journalist wrote on April 27, 1912, “it will become a city of stunted children and of unhappy adults. Its morals will suffer as well as its health.”... “It’s the core reason why Toronto doesn’t have a historic character of medium density throughout its historic core, like the four-storey buildings seen in American cities,” Ms. Abramowicz said.  The policy was generally quite effective, she said; for decades, much of the city saw very little apartment development... “We haven’t really shifted from the planning approach the City of Toronto took in 1912,” Ms. Abramowicz said. “I think it’s to our detriment.”  While experts agree that By-Law No. 6061 has left a mark on the city’s building story, many argue its more significant legacy is the attitude it initiated. According to Richard Harris, an urban historical geographer at McMaster University, Toronto’s early 20th-century policies led to its ingrained resistance to development in residential neighbourhoods... “The urban reform movement stopped neighbourhood destruction, but it then entrenched an anti-development mindset,” he said. “To me, that is the root of present-day opposition to the missing middle.”"

Why Toronto has a record number of condos for sale - "“The provincial government has been throwing gasoline on that fire by cutting development charges,” said Perks (Parkdale — High Park), “which further incentivizes investor and speculator parts of the market.”  Perks said he finds it difficult to articulate his outrage on this issue.  “The province’s solution to Ontario’s housing crisis has been to get rid of planning laws, development fees, the right of the public to have a conversation about the kind of city they want and magically it will be fixed,” he said. “Well, here we are at the end of the story and we’ve got empty condo units and people who can’t afford to live in the city. They were completely wrong.”"
Clearly, regulation that increases costs and makes it hard to build big condos is not to blame, because regulation is always good and the private sector is always evil and greedy, and increasing developer fees will make housing more affordable

Fixing the broken landlord and tenant dispute resolution system could help address affordability - "Data compiled by Tahmeed Shafiq , a Toronto-based researcher, found that, on average, it took 342 days for an eviction for non-payment case to be resolved. According to the ombudsman, as of March 2023, it took up to nine months to schedule a hearing for a landlord applicant, while tenant applicants might have to wait as long as two years. The delays at LTB have disproportionately impacted landlords. According to the ombudsman’s report, landlords filed the most complaints (84 per cent), while tenants filed only 12 per cent. As of November 2021, it took the LTB three months to process an application, and scheduling a hearing for rent collection or the eviction of a defaulting renter took an additional 66.5 days."
Left wingers will claim that landlords make the most complaints not because tenants abuse the system more but because slumlords are trying to exploit tenants

B.C. to allow multiplexes on single-family lots: What you need to know - "On June 30, the provincial government will mandate that all large municipalities in B.C. allow more residential units to be built on lots now zoned for single-family homes or duplexes. Bill 44 requires municipalities with at least 5,000 people to change their zoning bylaws to permit up to four units on a standard residential lot, and up to six units on a standard lot near public transit. There are 191 municipalities in B.C., of which 86 have fewer than 5,000 residents... Off-street parking will not be required if the development is close to public transit."

Curtains for protected views? Vancouver may end ‘view cones’ to make room for housing - "The City of Vancouver is looking at bringing additional housing to neighbourhoods but it may come at the expense of some beautiful views.  Vancouver city council will review a staff report that explores removing protected views so more housing can be built.  “View cones” have been a critical feature of Vancouver’s development policy since 1989. The cones were designed to preserve ocean and mountain views for specific locations within the city, and have limited the size and location of construction projects... Not everyone is on board with the proposal.  Melody Ma, who is part of Save Our Skyline YVR and Save Chinatown YVR, posted on X:  “Vancouver’s new director of planning thinks it’s ok to shrink Vancouver’s iconic postcard public mountain views like this one from Cambie St, to almost nothing.  “Once public views are destroyed, you can never get it back. You should be ashamed.”"
Damn greedy developers keeping housing expensive!
I went to an exhibition about Chinese people in Canada, and they talked about how locals used to protest against Chinese immigration, but they also interviewed a Chinese activist who was protesting housing densification. Ironic

Curtains for protected views? Vancouver may end ‘view cones’ to make room for housing : r/britishcolumbia - "They're what keeps some of these units psychologically habitable. I know that sounds like high end bougie luxury, but very few of these west end/coal harbour dwellings are actually luxury suites of high income earners. There's a lot of families crammed into600 sq ft flats and six roommates doing shift work/living in these concrete cells without a/c. Sitting on the patio and seeing a sliver of the water when you're paying $1200/month to share a mattress really keeps some folks going, and contrary to popular belief they're not all fat bankers and vacationing foreigners. They're the people who keep the city going.  Sure, fucking with the view may depreciate the units and make the resale value more accessible. But are working class folks really going to buy their studio apartments or are more investment firms just going to clean up and keep charging the same rent?"
Curtains for protected views? Vancouver may end ‘view cones’ to make room for housing : r/britishcolumbia - "Some of these view cones and corridors were designed by Arthur Erickson. It's not for developers to benefit but for locals to. Wreck them and the they don't come back. It's not about Nimby, this is about good urban planning and livable spaces."
Curtains for protected views? Vancouver may end ‘view cones’ to make room for housing : r/britishcolumbia - "I see the opposite. The view cones are public access to the views. When you build in front of them, only the people in key view-facing apartments will get the view. They are stealing the mountains from the public to reserve them for the rich."

B.C. to require new homes to be adaptable for disabilities, prompting concern from developers - The Globe and Mail - "Developers say the new rules will add potentially tens of thousands to the cost of all news homes because ensuring all builds can accommodate someone with a wheelchair or walker, for example, will require bigger kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms, among other changes.  B.C. is the first province to make such a sweeping requirement in its building code – one that is being heralded by disability advocates. But builders’ concerns have so alarmed the City of Vancouver, which has its own building code, that council recently voted to push implementing the changes by a year to May, 2026.  “It can mean having to increase the size of a unit by 5 to 10 per cent. Adding costs means you can’t build what people can afford,” said Anne McMullin, the president of the Urban Development Institute, the advocacy organization for the building industry... a report by Vancouver’s city manager to council two weeks ago recommended delaying harmonization with the B.C. code over concerns the new requirements could tip already marginal projects in the city, beset by high interest rates and constructions costs, into the no-can-do zone – the last thing councillors want amid pressure from the province and the public to get new housing built.  “By potentially increasing project costs and resulting in fewer dwelling units, the new requirements could add to these pressures and impact the supply of new housing, particularly for much needed new secured rental and social housing projects which face the greatest viability challenges,” the report says.  Accessibility Standards Canada, a federal agency created in 2019, has been gradually introducing more requirements for federal buildings. But Ms. McMullin said B.C. is the only jurisdiction asking for the requirements in 100 per cent of new residential buildings.  Architects and developers have been working out how to incorporate the changes at the least cost.  “It impacts small-sized units the most,” said Bryce Rositch, a founding partner at 33-year-old RH Architects. “If you’re designing for 530 square feet, it adds 50 to 70 square feet per unit.”  He estimated that at the current cost of construction, that works out to $50,000 to $70,000 more. At one project that he developed plans for in Surrey, it reduced the number of units that could be built on the site by 9 per cent. Mr. Rositch said municipalities with good policies to promote accessibility, such as the City of North Vancouver, require 20 per cent of apartments in a building to be accessible. The city gives the builder a bonus on the limit of buildable floor space to compensate for the extra room needed... he argued, the industry has exaggerated the additional costs. It’s not 10 or 15 per cent, but something between 2 and 5 per cent – not any more than the industry had to absorb to meet other requirements brought in in recent years, such as for energy efficiency or seismic improvements."
The fact that house prices will rise to pay for the regulation which will only benefit  small proportion of the population means capitalism will have failed because a developer should just not "buy as big of a second yacht, boo hoo"
Clearly, 10 measures that cost between 2 to 5 per cent don't increase the price of houses, and it's just greedy developers exploiting home buyers who are benefiting

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govt.exe is corrupt on X - "#BREAKING: After waging war on grocery stores... Jagmeet Singh now calls for laws to be passed across the country against landlords to ban evictions. Why would anyone want to rent out in this type of environment just to watch their asset turn into a slum filled with squatters?"

Toronto rent hits three-year low, but a swift comeback awaits - "Urbanation president Shaun Hildebrand noted that the current softening in rents is due to a temporary spike in condo completions, which he said will subside as new condo sales and construction activity drop."
Weird. Left wingers insist only "affordable housing" should be built

Tiny share of Canadian homes are Airbnbs that have potential to be long-term housing - The Globe and Mail - "Less than 1 per cent of the country’s housing stock are Airbnbs and Vrbo rentals that could be turned into long-term rentals or permanent housing, according to a Statistics Canada study.  Housing experts have been trying to understand how short-term rentals (STRs) affect the housing market given that rental vacancy rates are below 2 per cent in major cities such as Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax.  The Statscan study attempts to measure the share of STRs that could be turned into more permanent housing. It found that the share is “generally small” nationally as well as in the cities.  An estimated 0.69 per cent of the country’s housing stock in 2023 was short-term rentals that had the potential to be long-term housing, the study said.  “The data suggest that STRs are not a pivotal factor on the long-term rental market,” said Aled ab Iorwerth, deputy chief economist with the national housing agency, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., who was not involved in the study. “I don’t think it follows immediately that stopping a unit from being an STR will mean it’s immediately transferred into being a long-term rental,” he said... The study eliminated typical vacation properties such as cottages and chalets and only used short-term rentals where the entire unit was listed for rent for the majority of the year.  In Toronto and Vancouver, cities that have long struggled with affordable rental options, the percentage was 0.36 per cent and 0.45 per cent, respectively... touristy areas had the highest share of Airbnbs and Vrbos that could be turned into long-term dwellings. For example, in popular ski resort areas such as Whistler, B.C., the percentage was 35 per cent. In Mont-Tremblant, Que., the share was 16.4 per cent."
Left wingers don't want housing to become cheaper. They just hate people renting out property

London property manager flags uptick in false documents in tenant applications - "As the owner of a London, Ont., property management firm, a big part of Michelle Teichroeb's job is screening the information submitted in tenant applications.   Teichroeb, of Harrison Carter Group, will typically charge a landlord the equivalent of one month's rent to comb through the documents to verify tenants' income, rental history, credit history and character references.   She's there as a gatekeeper to ensure the documents prospective tenants submit are legitimate but said increasingly, they aren't.  "We've seen faked employment, doctored pay stubs and most recently, false bank statements," said Teichroeb, who's been in the business for 25 years. She said she began to notice an increase in fudged documents about 10 years ago, a time when London's rental market began to tighten considerably. While a low vacancy rate benefits landlords, allowing them to be more picky, it also increases the competition tenants face in the application process. Teichroeb showed CBC News a recent tenant application — with the applicant's name redacted — which she did not recommend for tenancy. Among the documents submitted were months of what appeared to be complete and accurate bank account statements from CIBC. They showed money going out for various purchases and expenses, but also listed what at first glance appeared to be regular payments from an employer. However, Teichroeb noticed the payroll deposits were always in suspiciously even amounts, such as $2,000. The deposit amounts were also not consistent in the amount or day deposited. Stranger still, the amounts listed under the statement's "deposit" column didn't change the overall total amount of funds in the account. Teichroeb believes the applicant dropped in false deposit entries into an otherwise legitimate bank statement.  Verifying income is a crucial part of screening tenant applications because non-payment of rent is a top reason for landlord-initiated evictions at Ontario's Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB).   "Your risk significantly goes up if you don't have a qualified tenant," she said. "If they're not qualified to pay for something, their risk of non-payment is huge.""
Clearly, it is unjustified for landlords to ask for so many documents so they can determine if their potential tenant is telling the truth, and no companies should own property and if individual landlords are more intrusive or do semi-legal/illegal things in lieu of big companies following the rules, that shows that capitalism has failed and housing needs to be nationalised instead of commoditised

Seeking solutions to the structural barriers of the GTA’s housing challenges - "On average, obtaining municipal approvals for new homes in the GTA takes roughly two years, with some municipalities taking almost three years (depending on the type of application). In stark contrast, other Canadian cities like Calgary can complete the process in just five months and London in ten.   These approval delays not only slow the supply of new homes but also increase costs. For example, according to our 2022 benchmarking study, delays for high-rise condos can add $2.60 to $3.30 per square foot each month, potentially increasing costs by $37,000 (20-month average) or up to $70,000 (34-months) for a 700 sqft apartment. What causes these delays, and how can we expedite the approval process to reduce costs?
In the GTA, government fees and taxes make up 25% of the cost of a new home, with over half of this amount coming from municipal fees like development charges (DCs), parkland fees, and community benefits charges (CBCs). These fees fund services and infrastructure such as parks, roads, and water systems.   Yet, there is a glaring discrepancy when comparing these costs with other regions. For instance, Ottawa’s DCs are roughly half of those in Pickering for high-rise apartments, and London’s charges are about one-third of Brampton’s for single-family homes. Are the costs of laying a sewer line or building a sidewalk truly three times higher in the GTA than elsewhere?
The GTA faces a critical shortage of serviced land needed for new housing. This scarcity drives up lot prices, which in turn raises the cost of new homes. This problem appears more pronounced in the GTA compared to other regions"
According to left wingers, reducing government fees and taxes is pointless, since developers will just raise their prices by exactly the same amount to compensate

Ontario developer coalition asks governments for tax breaks to pass on to homebuyers | Globalnews.ca : r/TorontoRealEstate - "Tax burden on new housing in Ontario is 31% of the purchase price. A new home in Ontario has a tax burden twice that of the rest of the economy. Governments make three times more than a builder of a new home.  https://www.cancea.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/CANCEA-TaxationOfOntarioHousing_2023.pdf  When 31% of the cost of a house is taxes, that's a huge problem ( basically a third )"
"  "It is important to note that all tax credits and rebates have been taken into account"  And yes fees for accessing government services are still taxes - taxes are reasonable in some cases - but it's still a tax -- the biggest chunk of that 7% is fees for processing paperwork - which is really just a cash grab, so please don't go that route lol  I'm also perfectly willing to look at Developer profits which sit at a "staggering" 10% margin ( on average ) - which for projects that take years --- I think a 10% margin is pretty reasonable.  But even if we slash that in half to 5% - it would barely make a dent in the price of a home.  But if we - 1. Kept the same margins or less for developers - while 2. significantly reducing or removing the tax burden - houses could be built cheaper"
"Welcome to Ontario (and specifically Toronto) where the government grift is completely out of control. Want lower housing costs? Fix this problem. The cost of new production drags up resale values. The funds collected aren’t directed to infrastructure related to housing - it’s just poured into other wasteful spending. Infuriating."

Indigenous American Bloodshed

Will Tanner on X

Happy Columbus Day!

Today, we must reject the Marxist lie that the "Indigenous People" across whom Columbus came were peaceful and living in harmony until he found them

They were bloodthirsty; Columbus helped bring an end to one of the most evil civilizations of all time

Remember, the Aztecs and Incas, the empires the Spain Columbus served destroyed, were like the Phoenicians and Canaanites but far worse

Instead of sacrificing a few children to their demonic gods, as Baal worshippers did, they sacrificed tens of thousands of men, women, and children

In fact, during the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, they killed 80,400 people, ripping the beating hearts out of their chests

The Spaniards who followed Columbus found that and were horrified by it

These weren't soft men; they were raised in the Reconquista's final stage, grinding fighting of sieges, ambushes and battles that saw slavery, bloodshed, and atrocities on a massive scale

But the New World horrified them. The cannibalism Columbus found, the mass human sacrifice of the Aztecs, the child sacrifice of the Incas, all of it was, to them, demonic and sickening

Cortes himself was horrified it, and saw his conquest of the Aztecs as necessary to extirpate a great evil. He wrote, in a letter back home:

"They have another custom, horrible, and abominable, and deserving punishment, and which we have never before seen in any other place, and it is this, that, as often as they have anything to ask of their idols, in order that their petition may be more acceptable, they take many boys or girls, and even grown men and women, and in the presence of those idols they open their breasts, while they are alive, and take out the hearts and entrails, and burn the said entrails and hearts before the idols, offering that smoke in sacrifice to them. Some of us who have seen this say that it is the most terrible and frightful thing to behold that has ever been seen. So frequently, and so often do these Indians do this, according to our information, and partly by what we have seen in the short time we are in this country, that no year passes in which they do not kill and sacrifice fifty souls in each mosque; and this is practiced, and held as customary, from the Isle of Cozumel to the country in which we are now settled. Your Majesties may rest assured that, according to the size of the land, which to us seems very considerable, and the many mosques which they have, there is no year, as far as we have until now discovered and seen, when they do not kill and sacrifice in this manner some three or four thousand souls. Now let Your Royal Highnesses consider if they ought not to prevent so great an evil and crime, and certainly God, Our Lord, will be well pleased, if, through the command of Your Royal Highnesses, these peoples should be initiated and instructed in our Very Holy Catholic Faith . . ."

Similarly, Bernal Diaz, who served under Cortes, in The Conquest of New Spain, wrote:

"The dismal drum of Huichilobos sounded again, accompanied by conches, horns and trumpet-like instruments. It was a terrifying sound, and when we looked at the tall cue from which it came we saw our comrades who had been captured in Cortes’ defeat being dragged up the steps to be sacrificed. When they had hauled them up to a small platform in front of the shrine where they kept their accursed idols, we saw them put plumes on the heads of many of them; and they made them dance with a sort of fan in front of Huichilobos. Then after they had danced, the papas laid them down on their backs on some narrow stones of sacrifice and, cutting open their chests, drew out their palpitating hearts, which they offered to the idols before them… (The Conquest of New Spain, volume II, chapter 152).

"I must say that when I saw my comrades dragged up each day to the altar, and their chests struck open and their palpitating hearts drawn out, and when I saw the arms and legs of these sixty-two men cut off and eaten, I feared that one day or another they would do the same to me. Twice already they had laid hands on me to drag me off, but it pleased God that I should escape from their clutches. When I remembered their hideous deaths, and the proverb that the little pitcher goes many times to the fountain, and so on, I came to fear death more than ever in the past. (The Conquest of New Spain, volume II, chapter 156)."

So, seeing Aztec practices as demonic and evil, they stamped it out

Now, of course, the claim is that they were purely motivated by greed and only later justified their conquest of the Aztecs by pointing to the horrific rituals

That is untrue; the conquest and desperate fighting in which they engages, often alongside anti-Aztec Indian allies, was motivated in large part by religion and horror

Such is what Hugh Thomas, in Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico explained, noting:

This repeated discovery of… human sacrifice concentrated the minds of the conquistadors… The Castilians in Mexico now realized the danger in which they would be if they were so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of the Mexica. This appreciation had a profoundly shocking effect, permanently souring relations with the Indians and causing the Castilians to adopt an unbending attitude in negotiations. Sacrifice was far from being merely a pretext for intervention. Aguilar (not the interpreter Aguilar), a member of the expedition, made this evident: “To my manner of thinking, there is no other kingdom on earth where such an offence and disservice has been rendered to Our Lord, nor where the devil has been so honoured.”

In stamping out that great evil, they did what there was a long tradition of in the West

The Bronze Age Greeks stamped out the neolithic sacrifice cults. The Baal-worshipping Canaanites were stamped out by the Israelites. The human-sacrificing Phoenician Carthaginians were destroyed by Rome, as were the "wicker man" Celts

Human sacrifice has long been the enemy of our civilization and tradition

And in stamping it out, the Conquistadors ended a great evil, human sacrifice on a scale previously unknown and probably unimaginable

They were only able to do so thanks to Columbus crossing the Atlantic, and so it is thanks to him that the sickening slaughter of the Aztecs, and similar horrors of lesser scale to the north and south, were stamped out for good

Yes, the Spanish Empire was flawed and cruel in many ways

But one must remember that Cortes walked into an unimaginable horror, and he ended that evil

The cultures destroyed by the West thanks to  weren't of peaceful hippies frolicking and singing; they were bloodthirsty mounds of sacrifice that were ended thanks to Columbus

So, happy Columbus Day!

If you're "indigenous," you can thank him that you're living in an air-conditioned building of steel rather than being sacrificed on a stone pyramid as some priest clad in feathers holds your beating heart above you

Links - 4th November 2024 (2)

There’s more herding in swing state polls than at a sheep farm in the Scottish Highlands - "if pollsters are doing honest work, we should see a lot more “outliers” than we do — even if people love to complain about them on Twitter. In our database as of this afternoon’s model run, there were 249 polls in the seven battleground states that met Silver Bulletin standards and did at least some of their fieldwork in October. How many of them showed the race in either direction within 2.5 percentage points, close enough that you could basically call it a tie? Well, 193 of them did, or 78 percent. That’s way more than you should get in theory — even if the candidates are actually exactly tied in all seven states, which they almost certainly aren’t. There’s more detail on this in the table below. Using this margin of error formula, I calculated the likelihood that a poll should show the race within ±2.5 points. This depends greatly on the sample size. For a poll of 400 people, the smallest sample size in our October swing state database, the chances that it will hit this close to the mark are only about 40 percent. For the largest sample, 5686 voters, it’s almost 95 percent instead. But most state polls are toward the lower end of this range, surveying between 600 and 1200 voters. All told, we’d expect 55 percent of the polls to show a result within 2.5 points in a tied race. Instead, almost 80 percent of them did. How unlikely is that? Based on a binomial distribution — which assumes that all polls are independent of one another, which theoretically they should be — it’s realllllllllllllly unlikely. Specifically, the odds are 1 in 9.5 trillion against at least this many polls showing such a close margin. The problems are most acute in Wisconsin, where there have been major polling errors in the past and pollsters seem terrified of going out on a limb. There, 33 of 36 polls — more than 90 percent — have had the race within 2.5 points. In theory, there’s just a 1 in 2.8 million chance that so many polls would show the Badger State so close. In Pennsylvania, which is the most likely tipping-point state — so weighing in there is tantamount to weighing in on the Electoral College — the problems are nearly as bad. There, 42 of 47 polls show the Trump-Harris margin within 2.5 points — about a 300,000 to 1 “coincidence”. Arizona, Georgia and Michigan are less bad — though that’s partly because polls there have usually been showing leads for Trump, Trump and Harris respectively, so if pollsters are trying to match the consensus, a stray Trump +3 in Arizona or Harris +3 in Michigan won’t stand out so much. This is a clear-as-day example of what we call herding: the tendency of some polling firms to move with the flock by file-drawering (not publishing) results that don’t match the consensus or torturing their turnout models until they do. Some pollsters, like the New York Times/Siena College, don’t do this, and are proud to own their work even when it differs from the polling averages. But others like Redfield & Wilton do. Here are the numbers for the polling firms that released at least eight swing state polls in October:"... By contrast, the most highly-rated polling firms like the Washington Post show much less evidence of herding. YouGov has actually had fewer close polls than you’d expect, although that’s partly because they’ve tended to be one of Harris’s best pollsters, so their surveys often gravitate toward numbers like Harris +3 rather than showing a tie. Our pollster ratings actually include a penalty for herding: polls that consistently match numbers from other recently published polls in a way that is highly statistically improbable see their ratings downgraded... The irony, as I wrote in 2014, is that although herding may make individual polls more accurate, they actually make polling averages less accurate. Polling averages are supposed to aggregate independent opinions — that’s literally one of the preconditions for the wisdom of crowds working in James Surowiecki’s classic book by that name. And from pollsters like Redfield & Wilton, we aren’t getting an independent opinion — in fact, we aren’t really getting an opinion at all. In this election, the incentives are doubly bad, because the polling averages in the swing states are close to zero — so a pollster can both herd toward the consensus and avoid taking a stand that there’s a ~50/50 chance they’ll later be criticized for by publishing a steady stream of Harris +1s, Trump +1s and ties"

Markos Moulitsas on X - "I know plenty of polling, including my own, that doesn’t look like the public polling, and won’t be publicly released. And it just confirms that the aggregators are being fed by shit data, and their results are shit."

Meme - "Why Fonts Matter, 2022 edition.
WELCOME TO 'THE CLIT' / WELCOME TO 'THE CUT'
FOREST RECREATION AREA"
Amusingly, iFunny recognised it as "The Clit"

Meme - @ratlimit: "apologies for my phrasing. instead of "my partner", which has connotations of ownership, I am trying to update my language to "a partner to me" (PTM). credit to my PTM for calling me out on this"
masha @MashaParty: "i love this! my lovemate calls me their PFN (Person For Now) to recognize that while i'm in their life today, they don't owe me a tomorrow. it really makes me grateful for every day i have with them"

Singapore woman’s suicide amidst legal battle raises concerns over legal system - "A Singaporean woman, Geno Ong, posted a suicide note before taking her own life, accusing Raymond Ng of financially ruining her through multiple lawsuits. Ong said her legal fees had become unbearable. Ng expressed sadness but denied responsibility, stating the lawsuits were for defamation.
On 6 September 2024, Singaporean woman Geno Ong, also known by her Facebook alias “Mai Siao Siao,” tragically took her own life after posting an emotional note on her Facebook page.  Ong accused businessman Raymond Ng, associated with the group “Healing the Divide,” of financially devastating her through multiple lawsuits. She claimed that her legal fees, which had ballooned to nearly S$100,000, had left her unable to continue defending herself.  Ong’s Facebook post detailed the severe psychological and physical toll the lawsuits had taken on her, recounting sleepless nights, anxiety, and deteriorating health.  She also accused Ng and his wife, Iris Koh, of targeting average Singaporeans with frivolous lawsuits to drain their financial resources.   Ong’s note has raised serious concerns about the pressures of prolonged legal battles and the potential misuse of the legal system to financially exhaust individuals...   Notably, Cheng and Raymond Ng are also currently embroiled in their own defamation suits against each other over social media posts, adding to the public focus on how litigation can be used in personal disputes...   Ng explained that the lawsuits he had filed against Ong were based on serious defamation allegations she had made, particularly those involving government officers from the Ministry of Health (MOH), Ministry of Manpower (MOM), and the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS). Ng claimed that Ong had falsely accused him of criminal activities and spread rumours that he was being targeted by authorities.  He emphasized that his legal actions were intended to protect his reputation and seek justice, not to cause harm.  Ng also revealed that despite offering Ong opportunities to settle the matter out of court or provide evidence for her claims, she had refused to engage in meaningful dialogue or mediation.  He noted that her continued defamation had left him no choice but to pursue legal action.  “By killing herself, she also attempted to blackmail the legal system into her own sense of justice. She can just anyhow defame anyone, and when she is naturally sued for defamation, she retaliates by killing herself.”...   Under Singapore law, defamation does not require proof of actual damage to reputation"
When defamation law is intentionally loose, there's collateral damage

Ford government absolutely should put limits on bike lanes. - "Whether in Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, London or elsewhere in the province, the number one issue I hear about in any decent sized town is how bad traffic is becoming. There very much is a war on the car being carried out by councils and urban planners. They seem determined to ensure driving becomes insufferable to the point where people give up out of frustration. There isn’t a revolt against the existence of bike lanes but rather against bike lanes above all else. The line I hear time and again is that people support bike lanes where they make sense but now they are being put where they don’t make sense. As an example, in Toronto there was a compromise several years ago to put bike lanes on Yonge St., north of Bloor St., rather than putting them on Avenue Rd. Those bike lanes have reduced Yonge to one lane in each direction, snarled traffic and made passage for emergency vehicles precarious at best. Now, council has just approved more than 100 km of additional bike lanes, including putting them on Avenue Rd., the area they voted not to place them in the past. Bike lanes don’t just populate downtown streets where they might make sense but are now in suburban areas where few people use them. The entire bike lane issue has gotten out of control. If the Ford government were to come out with rules to limit the rampant expansion of bike lanes, to limit them to areas where they make sense, it would be incredibly popular politically. Councils aren’t listening to their citizens, they are listening to a highly organized cycling lobby and ignoring or demonizing anyone who drives a car."

Meme - Not Inkless🟠 @InklessPW: "this is the heart of Jessica's riding -- it has become a sh*thole of vacant storefronts thanks in part to the Yonge St bike lanes that are mostly used by illegal e-cycles"
Jessica Bell @JessicaBellTO: "Bike lanes are part of the solution to our massive traffic congestion problems because bike lanes make it easier for more people to quickly and safely get from A to B.  We are organizing a bike rally with cyclists, health and road safety advocates..."

To Democrats, 'democracy' means rule by . . . THEM - "Democracy in America: What is it? Whatever it is, we know that it is under siege. Barely a moment goes by without tocsins sounding about various threats to “our democracy.” It used to be that the biggest, baddest threat to “our democracy” was Donald Trump. Then a curious thing happened. When it comes to “threats to our democracy,” Trump seems to have been overshadowed somewhat by a new threat: the Constitution... The limits on federal power set forth in the Constitution make it a bulwark against many sorts of abuse, including that most constant temptation of democracies, the tyranny of the majority. Yet Americans now find their lives directed by a jumble of agencies far removed from the legislature and staffed by bureaucrats who make and enforce a vast network of rules that govern nearly every aspect of our lives. Woodrow Wilson, a standard-bearer for an earlier incarnation of the progressive juggernaut, welcomed such an arrangement. “The bulk of mankind,” he noted sadly, “is rigidly unphilosophical, and nowadays the bulk of mankind votes.” What to do? The solution was to shift real power out of elected bodies and into the hands of the right sort of people, enlightened people, progressive people — people, that is to say, like Woodrow Wilson. Many commentators have noted the profoundly undemocratic maneuver by which Joe Biden was erased and Kamala Harris installed as the Democratic presidential nominee. After all, nearly 15 million people voted for Joe Biden in the Democratic primary. He won, hands down, because certain high-level Democrats made sure that other candidates — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — were shunted to one side. They had done the same thing to Bernie Sanders years before. All, of course, in the name of “democracy.” Which brings me to the distinction between “democracy” and what Democrats like to call “our democracy.” The latter poaches on the authority and prestige of the former. But honestly parsed, the phrase “our democracy” really means “rule by Democrats.” It used to be that the left accorded a certain latitude to opposing views. That’s all over now. Every issue is an existential emergency for which the left’s shock troops are willing to go to the wall. Every loss demands that people scream at the sky. We win or we threaten to burn everything down. At least since Trump’s victory in 2016, the dominant attitude has been that only the left is allowed to win. Any conservative victory is by definition illegitimate, a blow to “our democracy.”"

'I'm pleased it is being used for people's safety': QR code inventor relishes its role in tackling Covid - "The eureka moment that helped Masahiro Hara perfect the Quick Response, or QR code, sprang from a lunchtime game of Go more than a quarter of a century ago... As an employee of the automotive components firm Denso Wave, Hara had been fielding requests from factories to come up with a better way to manage their inventories of an ever-expanding range of parts. Workers wanted a less labour-intensive way to store more information, including kana and kanji characters, but the barcodes then in use could hold only 20 or so alphanumeric characters of information each. In some cases, a single box of components carried as many as 10 barcodes that had to be read individually... the two-dimensional patterns of tiny black and white squares, which can handle 200 times more information than a standard barcode, have revolutionised the way we shop, travel and access websites... it was the development of smartphone cameras that brought the QR code into widespread use, with in-built apps allowing people to quickly scan arrays of dots to access websites and claim discount coupons. Hara, 63, said he was “amazed” when cashless payments using the code caught on in China. “I never thought it would be used as a form of money.”... Denso Wave’s decision to keep the code’s patents open from the outset – in part to encourage other firms to take the technology further – has fuelled its ubiquity"

The Chinese émigrés leaving the pressures of home for laid back Chiang Mai - "Chiang Mai, a tourist hotspot popular with backpackers and nature-lovers, has become an unlikely second home for thousands of new Chinese émigrés. More than 110,000 Chinese nationals applied for long-term visas in Thailand between January and September in 2022, nearly the total number for 2019. Nearly half of the members of Thailand’s “elite card” visa scheme, which offers long term residency rights for a fee starting at 900,000 Thai Baht (£19,400) are Chinese. Thousands of them are settling in Chiang Mai, attracted by the city’s laid back atmosphere and permissive social environment – with or without the legalised marijuana. Cannabis has never been freely available in the People’s Republic of China. But it was not so long ago that China’s big cities were replete with independent bookstores, cinemas and social spaces where like-minded people could meet openly to discuss topics such as feminism, LGBT issues, philosophy and anything else that might interest them. While certain topics were always forbidden, the country’s intelligentsia navigated these red lines with relative ease. But after more than a decade of increasingly iron-fisted rule by Xi Jinping, few, if any, of these spaces remain. So it is that Nowhere Bookstore opened in Chiang Mai in November 2023, after the launch of its sister shop in Taipei the previous year. Founded by Zhang Jieping, a mainland-born journalist who is now based at Harvard University, the small space stocks material on topics that would be impossible to discuss openly in China, such as the 2022 white paper protests and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. “There are many books that you can’t see or buy in mainland China,” says a young designer from Guangzhou who seized the opportunity to visit the shop while on holiday in Thailand, saying that she otherwise has to rely on the “fragmented information” of the Chinese internet. As well as selling books, Nowhere also hosts Chinese-language events on wide-ranging topics for the growing Chinese community in Chiang Mai. At a recent event, the 62-year-old writer Zheng Shiping spoke about spending his retirement years in exile. Zheng started his career as a policeman in the 1980s but quit the force after Tiananmen Square massacre, and went on to become a renowned poet and writer, working under the pen name Ye Fu. He arrived in Thailand at the end of 2019, having heard from doctors in Wuhan, the capital of his home province of Hubei, about a virus that was spreading dangerously fast in the city. “Thailand is certainly not as safe as the US, Europe or Japan,” he says, acutely aware of the fate of Gui Minhai, a Swedish bookseller who was kidnapped from Thailand in 2015, reappearing months later in Chinese custody, an incident which spooked dissidents in Thailand. “But it’s still basically a country with free speech. It basically protects human rights”. Zheng is part of an older cabal of expats who have established a retirement village-meets-arts community in a suburb of Chiang Mai. Unlike the millennial transplants, this older generation was forged in China’s more liberal era of the 1980s, and have a more political perspective about the country’s trajectory. “We were hopeful, a generation of people who made great sacrifices and efforts, but ultimately failed,” says Zheng. “Young Chinese today are more desperate than we were then. In the next few years, they will be unemployed, their lives will be in crisis, and their rights as human beings will diminish little by little.” For Du Yinghong, an artist, part of the reason he emigrated was because he believes that “art is dead” in his home country. “It’s spiritually unsatisfying, materially unsatisfying,” he says. As well as the low cost of living in Thailand, Du was attracted to the country’s Buddhism. Thailand is thought to be home to the second-largest number of Buddhists in the world after China, and as a share of the population, it is far more prevalent in Thailand, with 90% of adults claiming adherence to the faith, according to Pew Research Centre. “Chinese Buddhism is Buddhism in quotation marks,” says Du, aged 48. “There is no real Buddhism in China, there is no real Christianity, there is no real Islam … it’s all fake. Of course, there are a lot of really devout people in China, good people, but what they do, or believe in, it’s in a specific kind of political environment, it doesn’t allow you to have real faith”. Many of the Chinese in Thailand say that they are attracted to the idea of a less consumerist, more peaceful lifestyle, informed by Thailand’s Buddhist principles. With the highest rate of inequality in east and south-east Asia, Thailand’s appeal may be informed more by the fact that the low cost of living allows relatively wealthy Chinese to have a slower pace of life in Chiang Mai than they could afford in Chongqing

What if ‘ghosting’ people isn’t just rude, but psychologically harmful? - "In the 1920s, ghosting a close friend would indeed have been shocking. Ghosting as a social move was pretty much unheard of into the 2000s. Remember that 2003 episode of Sex and the City where Carrie is outraged that Jack Berger breaks up with her via Post-it note? “I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me,” says the offending scrap of paper. “Today, that would be seen as almost respectful,” says a young woman I often talk to about modern dating. “At least he said something.” Today, ghosting is all too common, especially in the world of online dating. According to a recent study from the University of Vienna, ghosting has become “notorious” as the go-to method for ending a connection that began on a dating app. Another study this year by Forbes found that “a staggering 76% of respondents have either ghosted or been ghosted in the context of dating.”... “It’s disrespectful, mean, and downright rude,” says Bumble, which recently gained kudos for allegedly “banning ghosting”. “No ghosting on Bumble!” the dating app announced on its website – though on closer inspection it seems that Bumble has not so much banned ghosting as it has encouraged users to report it when one of their matches has failed to show up for an agreed-upon, in-person date. After which, the company claims, “a human moderator will then fact-check the information before taking action.” That sounds complicated and difficult to prove, and one wonders how many users will actually be banned by Bumble for failure to appear. It’s also ironic that a dating app is promising to ban behavior it helped to foster. And ghosting doesn’t only refer to being a no-show at a date, but to abruptly ending a conversation or even a relationship that has lasted for weeks or months, even years. Social media is awash in videos of people expressing their frustration at being ghosted by people they’ve been dating both casually and seriously... A recent study from the University of Georgia says that researchers were surprised to find that over half the participants in its survey on ghosting and dating said that they had also been ghosted by a friend – which felt “just as bad” as being ghosted by a romantic partner, or even worse. And in their professional lives, people are now routinely being ghosted in work situations involving hiring, pitching, networking and more."

Man stabbed himself to death separating frozen burgers - "It took police more than a month after Barry Griffiths died to seal off his flat in Llandrindod Wells after a post-mortem revealed that he died from a stab wound, during which time some evidence had been lost. An inquest at Pontypridd Coroner's Court on Monday (September 16) heard that the investigation later found that there was no evidence that anyone else was involved in the death of the 57-year-old, whose body was found on July 4, 2023 after concerns were raised that he hadn't been seen for more than a week. Area coroner Patricia Morgan concluded that Mr Griffiths, who had restricted use of one arm following a stroke, most likely died from an accident while preparing frozen food for cooking."

richard on X - "the geniuses at the LAPD noticed a medical diagnostic clinic had high energy usage so they raided it for no reason and a cop had his gun looney tunes style stolen from him by powerful magnets."
LAPD raid goes bad after gun allegedly sucked onto MRI machine - "An officer with the Los Angeles Police Department found out the hard way that you can’t take metal near an MRI machine after their rifle flew out of their hands and became attached to the machine during a pot raid gone bad, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week.  The incident’s details were described in a lawsuit filed by the owners of a Los Angeles medical imaging center, who allege that their business was wrongly targeted by LAPD during a raid in October 2023 The lawsuit was first reported on by Law360.com.  The owners of NoHo Diagnostic Center are suing the LAPD, the city of Los Angeles and multiple police officers, alleging they violated the business owners’ constitutional rights and demanding an unspecified amount in damages. Officers allegedly raided the diagnostic center, located in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, thinking it was a front for an illegal cannabis cultivation facility, pointing to higher-than-usual energy use and the “distinct odor” of cannabis plants, according to the lawsuit.   Officers raided the facility on Oct. 18, 2023, and detained the lone female employee while they searched the business, the lawsuit said. However, they didn’t find a single cannabis plant and only saw a typical medical facility with rooms used for conducting x-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans and MRIs, the owners said.  The officers then released the employee and told her to call a manager, the lawsuit said, while they continued to wander around various rooms of the facility. The plaintiffs say the officers’ behavior was “nothing short of a disorganized circus, with no apparent rules, procedures, or even a hint of coordination.”  At one point, an officer walked into an MRI room, past a sign warning that metal was prohibited inside, with his rifle “dangling… in his right hand, with an unsecured strap,” the lawsuit said. The MRI machine’s magnetic force then allegedly sucked his rifle across the room, pinning it against the machine... An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor"

Richard Hanania on X - "These lists of the most Democratic and Republican names for both sexes are funny."
James Lippens on X - "Damn people just saddle their kids with these dogshit names"
How Republican or Democratic is your name? - The Washington Post

Meme - Edward Kmett @kmett: "A coworker and I were talking about the proper way to kill children in a food court once, in the wake of 9/11, and had mall security called on us.  The ensuing awkward explanation of unix process terminology with a jittery mall-cop has lived rent-free in my head ever since."
neural nets. @cneuralnetwork: "never studying OS again" Contents
9.4 Process Primitives
9.4.1 Having Children
9.4.2 Watching Your Children Die.
9.4.3 Running New Programs
9.4.4 A Bit of History vfork()
9.45 Killing Yourself
9.4.6 Killing Others
9.4.7 Dumping Core"

Bill Ackman on X - "I don’t know whether Eric Adams @ericadamsfornyc  is guilty or innocent. He does, however, deserve the presumption of innocence.   I do know that Eric loudly spoke the truth on the migrant problem in NYC and what the consequences would be for New Yorkers and the country. Doing so required bravery, as sharing these views publicly as a Democratic mayor did not win him any friends in the Party or with the Biden/Harris administration.   Having witnessed the weaponization of our country’s prosecutorial resources, sadly I have to say I am that much more skeptical when indictments are announced against someone whose views are not welcomed by the party in charge.   One would hope that in our political system, indictments would only be brought in cases where the probability of conviction is very high as it is beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty. Sadly, I am less confident that the system works that way any more."

Bill Ackman on X - "In short, the case against @ericadamsfornyc  Eric Adams is comprised of two main charges.  That is, he purportedly received airline and hotel room upgrades, and in exchange he pressured the @FDNY  to accelerate the temporary certification of occupancy of a newly constructed building.   The value of the ‘graft’ is calculated to be $123,000, but we all know that the face amount of airline tickets and the rack rate of hotel rooms are fictional numbers. Empty airline seats and hotel rooms expire every day which is why upgrades are available often for free or for nominal cost. In one case, Adams is accused of paying ‘only’ $600 for a $7,000 suite and pictures of the ‘suite’ are included in the complaint.   Knowing something about nice hotel rooms and a lot about the hotel business, I can tell you that $600 is much closer to a fair estimate of value for that room than $7,000 and an upgrade to that room would not be anything other than ordinary course for a hotelier.  I would be surprised based on the photos if that room ever achieved the purported $7,000 rack rate.   The hotel room examples and their photos on their own call into question the credibility of the other allegations in the case.   Can anyone think of an example of a bribery charge brought against a sitting politician based on airline or hotel room upgrades?   I have flown on many DC/NYC shuttles where one or more House or Senate members is sitting in the first row of first or business class and I am sure they didn’t pay extra for their ticket. If anything I have assumed that those seats are chosen for the politicians for security reasons.   If airline upgrades are graft, then we should be able to arrest and empty out the Congress and start over which might be good for our democracy.   I am sure the @X  community has some photos of their favorite politicians in the front of the plane.   The other charge is that Adams received ‘straw’ campaign donations, that is, donations that were funneled through individuals to conceal the fact that they were from foreign nationals who reimbursed the straw men for their out of pocket donations.   This charge was by no means proven in the complaint. That is for a jury and a judge to determine.   I am not trying to minimize in any way our election laws and the strict rules on gifts for government employees.  I simply and strongly believe that a man is innocent until proven guilty and that the Mayor deserves this presumption of innocence unless and until he is proven guilty."

Richard Hanania on X - "Blacks have now made up less than 2% of NYC mayors throughout history but 100% of those who have been indicted while serving."

Stephen Fleming on X - "True story: Caterpillar parked a trailer outside a local trade show. I went in, sat down in the simulator seat, and had a great time driving a simulated bulldozer. Full throttle bouncing over berms, etc. Until the PR rep came in and freaked out. I wasn’t playing a simulator. I was remotely operating a real bulldozer at their training grounds fifty miles away, and I damn near destroyed it.   Oops…"

Canada’s Conservatives are crushing Justin Trudeau - "When Mr Poilievre won the leadership of the party in September 2022, the Conservatives were tied with the Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau, the prime minister. Today the Conservatives have a 17-point lead (see chart). The party has not polled this well since 1988. Many of Mr Poilievre’s plans are still foggy, but he has built his popularity on a pair of issues that bother swathes of the electorate: inflation and a drum-tight housing market strained by millions of immigrants. He couples this with a well-honed pitch to young voters and relentless hard-hat-heavy signals that he feels for working people’s troubles. That Mr Trudeau has a net personal approval rating of minus 35 helps, too... Thanks in large part to this issue, the Conservatives now lead by 15 percentage points among voters aged 18 to 35, a sharp reversal of traditional patterns. That lead opened up once Mr Poilievre began to attack Mr Trudeau over the 66% rise in house prices since the Liberals were elected in 2015. That year there was an unprecedented increase in first-time voters. Many were attracted to Mr Trudeau’s promise to legalise marijuana use and to bring down carbon emissions. Young voters now care a lot more about moving out of their parents’ basements and eventually buying a home... he told a blue-chip audience of bosses earlier this year that he is not interested in meeting them for lunch at plush private clubs and would rather talk to workers on factory floors. His “daily obsession” as prime minister would be, he said, “about what is good for the working class of people in this country”. He would ban his ministers from attending the elite gabfests in the Swiss resort of Davos. Pin-striped Tories, with nowhere else to go, are sticking with him... A survey of private-union members by Abacus Data, a pollster, suggests that 43% back the Conservatives compared with 24% for the Liberals. “The centre of Conservative gravity is no longer the entrepreneur,” says Sean Speer, a policy adviser to the last Conservative government. “It’s the wage earner.”"

Richard Hanania on X - "“Hot Mom Drop Off.” A European can never understand the culture of Florida State University."

Shades of Grey - The Joy of Painting S2E4 - "After a meeting with a colorblind friend Bob does a whole painting in grey to show us that everyone can paint."

Do You Need a Guard Llama? - "The cuddly, four-hooved animal that shares an ancestor with the camel, alpaca, vicuna, and guanaco has a growing reputation as a good guardian of property and livestock. Yes, guard llamas are a real thing.  “Llamas are well-equipped with offensive weapons,” says Ken Kalish of Carma Llama Rescue in Park Rapids, MN. “They will approach a predator as though they are curious, as though they want to smell it. Once they get close enough, they strike.”"

Meme - "Cartoons led me to believe Id have more sandwiches topped with an olive on a toothpick in my life."

GG ends Quebec trip when reporters notice she can't speak French - "More than three years after vowing to learn French, Governor General Mary Simon abruptly cut short a visit to Quebec City after local media noticed that she wasn’t able to say much more than, “Hello, how are you?”... Although Simon is Canada’s first-ever Indigenous governor general, she was also the first Canadian-born holder of the office not to speak both official languages.  And that hasn’t happened for quite some time. The last Governor General without a working knowledge of French would have served during the pre-1950s era, when the position was reserved entirely for British nobility. In Simon’s first speech as Governor General, she expressed a commitment to add “Canada’s other official language, French” to her repertoire... Simon’s lack of French has been a major point of contention among Francophones.  The Commissioner of Official Languages was barraged with complaints following Simon’s appointment. An Angus Reid Institute survey from the time found a plurality of French-speaking Quebecers opposed her appointment... Two French-language advocacy groups are also championing a Charter challenge seeking to have Simon’s appointment annulled.  The groups Justice Pour le Québec and Association De Défense Des Droits Individuels Et Collectifs Du Québec (ADDICQ) have argued that Simon’s appointment is a violation of the Charter guarantee for French and English to have “equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Parliament and government of Canada.” Although the federal government has attempted to have the case quashed, last month a Quebec judge ruled that it will proceed to a hearing."
Mary Simon hits back at 'personal attacks' of her French - "Gov. Gen. Mary Simon insists her lack of French language proficiency does not hinder her ability to represent Canadians, after several Quebec politicians this week criticized her for not yet being fluent in the language, three years after her appointment."
Naturally people were trying to claim that speaking an indigenous language was better than being able to speak French, or that French was not necessary for the job, or saying that everyone should have to learn an indigenous language, or that adults can't learn new languages